


Thoughts about a Grey Warden in a Blight

by pacoca



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-14 06:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16035065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pacoca/pseuds/pacoca
Summary: The journey from Ostagar to the Final Battle. Alistair's POV.





	1. Ostagar

**I.**

 

He could not believe that someone could live being so ridiculously small, and be so damn unaware of it.

‘You are Alistair?’ the elf asked, cocking her head to one side. She says his name carefully, her bare feet shuffling slightly across the stone.

‘Ah... yes’. _She’s not wearing any shoes,_ he thought, _why isn't she wearing any shoes?_ ‘And you must be the new recruit, Duncan told me about you.”

He remembers a letter. Something vague written in about the dalish, and darkspawn taint. _You’ll know when you meet her._ Cryptic as always.

‘I am.’ She replies, ‘He’s asked me to come get you. We should go there soon.’ Her words are sharp. _Stop wasting time_ , she says. _We have work to do._

She turns briskly to leave, red hair flaring behind her like a burning sunset.

 

  
**II.**

 

She has a certain wildness about her. A raw savagery in her swagger that stood her apart from everyone else.

They are scouring through the Korcari Wilds. So far, they have killed a pack of wolves and three teams of darkspawn. Many lay dead now with an arrow between the eyes.

The Dalish bred terrifying hunters and this woman was no different. She is like a fox on a hunt, ears pricked and eyes like daggers. She disappears between the trees, a meer shadow behind the wood, then come back, seemingly out of nowhere. _‘Daveth, two archers in the back. Watch out for the grunts behind the pillars over there…’_

They follow her without thinking about it, and Alistair found himself becoming more of an observer than a leader.

He watches the smallest woman in the world commanding three grown men like they were trained mabari.

He had to admit it was a bit of a turn on.

“On your left, Alistair!”

Yes, ma’am.

 

 

**III.**

 

Ostagar had turned into bloodbath.

Alistair closes his eyes and he could see the fire on the balustrades, the never ending sea of blood that pooled between the stone in rivers, and the gnarled, twisted faces of the darkspawn, sneering with their black teeth and pale eyes. He could feel their knives slicing at his skin, the serrated edges tugging deeper into the flesh as they pulled. The pain, the blood, the spray of black ichor as he sank his sword inside its throat.

He tries to remember he is alive. That their laughter wouldn’t find its way here, not so deep into the Korcari Wilds.

He doesn't want to think about how they fell upon Cailan’s army. How Duncan, brave and fearless, protected his king and was butchered under their swords. How his blood colored the earth as it spilled between the rocks, along with the hundreds of men and women who had been unlucky enough to get caught in the crosshairs of their king and his traitorous general.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is based off my first dao playthrough a couple of years ago, so there's a lot of... very interesting decisions etc. that I've made. I sort of just been hacking away at this on my spare time, so updates would be very sporadic. Thanks so much for reading!


	2. Lothering

**IV.**

 

Alistair does his best to hide his feelings. It doesn't work very well.

The first one to notice was that swamp witch. It seems nothing can escape that savage, pointed stare of her leer and Alistair only wished he had a stick to poke it out with.

‘Must you go about like this?’, she scoffed, ‘a set of brooding shoulders doesn’t make for very good company, you know.’

‘And you must know everything about good company.’ He retorted. ‘What with spending your whole life in the woods and all, making tiny forest friends and whatnot.’ ’

The woman only rolled her eyes at him.

 

**V.**

 

The next one to notice was the dog.  

They were halfway through the fork on the road when the mabari suddenly stops to poke at the heels of his armor.

‘Uh…’

Alistair fidgets away, but the mabari seems intent on sniffing out his toes.

‘It seems the dog has finally found a suitable place to relieve itself.’ Swamp witch says. He would tell her to stuff it, if he wasn’t so aware of the mabari considering him as substitute of a particular type of target practice.

‘Hey! No… bad doggy. Do your business… elsewhere….’

Is he lifting his leg? He could’ve sworn he was lifting his leg.  

Mahariel is staring at them now. A look on her of something like concern? Annoyance? It is hard to tell.

The mabari doesn’t pee on his leg. He only nuzzles and licks before leaving. Later, he presents a thick, half-rotted bone at his bedspread. It is black and brown and pungent with the smell of something dying.

Lovely

 

 

**VI.**

 

‘You don’t have to talk you know. If you don’t want to.’

They are sitting by the creek, a quarter of  a mile away from Lothering. The water is a steady stream of noise that fills the silence between their talking. He is cleaning out the darkspawn grit on his armour while she polishes her daggers, pausing occasionally to turn the edges over under the sunlight.

Her words take him by surprise.

‘Sorry, what?’ He blinks at her. They have been talking-- or she had been talking, he doesn't quite remember when he stopped--about strategy, and plans. Somewhere along the way he got quiet, again, and she must’ve noticed though he didn’t quite realise she _cared_.

‘I mean with Ostagar’, she continues, turning her dagger over and polishing the edge there, ‘This grief… it’s yours. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.’

‘I uh…’ He can’t look at her. He scrubs a stubborn piece of darkspawn jutting out of an iron chasm in the armor, ‘Just wish things didn’t go down the way they did--’ _Scrub, scrub._ ‘Those soldiers, and Duncan--’ _Scrub. ‘_ They deserved better.’

‘He was your mentor?’

‘My friend.’ He says, a bit too softly. He shakes his head and turns the chest piece over, ‘Anyway, they wouldn’t want me sulking either, getting all teary and red-eyed when we’ve got grey warden business to be doing.’

He thinks she’s going to be quiet about this, just like she always does. Hopes she does, hopes this mountain of grief and confusion and embarrassment hauls him up and swallows him whole.

‘In our clan, we honour our dead a different way.’ She says. Her voice has grown quiet. Somehow, he thinks she is waiting for him to tell her it's okay to move on, to let her talk.

Honestly, he’d rather polish his armor. But he nods to her anyway, since he is curious and still a bit surprised.

She talks about how elves plant the bodies of their dead on the soil. How their bodies are laid bare and curled up inside the earth, naked as the day they were born.

He imagines his old mentor seeping between the darkspawn and taking root, fingers stretched to miles and miles below the ground until he is rock and sand and grass.

He imagines his roots holding the ground beneath them between its weave of fingers, so that the path they travel is always steady and unwavering.

_Eyes forward, Alistair._

Somehow, he feels lighter.

 

 

 

**VII.**

 

They pick up trouble in Lothering. Trouble in the form of one prophetic, high-to-holy-Andraste nutcase and a 7 foot tall wall of murderous intent.

Honestly, sometimes he’s not sure why he follows her at all.


	3. Redcliffe

**VIII.**

‘Don’t you ever get prickles prancing around in your bare feet all the time?’  

 He watches Morrigan leaning over the pot and sprinkling something inside before closing it. Poison probably. Or eyeballs. From this distance, she looks like a right proper witch.

‘I get prickles just by watching you, you know.’ He continues. ‘I swear I even got some just now.’

Mahariel wiggles her toes at him.

‘Cute.’ He wrinkles his nose, ‘And kind of disgusting.’

She chews a piece of elfroot in her mouth then carefully lays it on the gaping gash on his arm. He feels the pain on it slowly simmering down to a breath.

Her hair is pulled back now, it curls softly around her jaw and the outlines of her tattoo.

‘I feel lighter without it.’ She rolls the cloth tightly around his arm, ‘And my feet are used by the prickles. They are not baby feet like yours.’

‘Well, forgive my frail human feet and the comfortable wall of _shoes_ around it but I think you hurt their feelings.’

‘My _ma’nali_ elf feet would make your human feet cry for its mother.’ She is smiling now.

‘I can’t hear you over the sound of me not having to sludge through a metre of mud on my bare toes and additionally slipping right on her bottom halfway through.’

‘...I thought you said you didn’t see.’

Alistair pats her arm, ‘We all did, my dear.’

 

**VIII.**

 

He should tell her. He really should.

He wonders how she’ll feel. He _knows_ how the others will react, knows that he’ll feel the change back at camp, expects it even. The thought forms like a thick bile in his throat. Andraste knows they’d have more ammunition to throw against him-- but this isn't about that. This is about _her_.

Somehow, that seems more important than what any of them thinks put together.

He decides it is best to take it slow. Start out casual, then slide the comment in. Add in a bit of charm, be smooth about it.

They are at Redcliffe now. His palms are clamming up underneath his gloves. He wonders if she could smell the stink.

_Keep it together._

He turns to her and the words are out before he can comprehend them.

‘I’m a bastard!’

 

 

**IX.**

 

Alistair feels himself being torn in two.

The first half is the weapon that the Chantry forged. It tells him whispers of abominations, and the bloody consequence of black magic. His blade hums under his fingers. Fearful. Impatient.

The other is the bastard who couldn’t bear to see a mother without her son.

So when Lady Isolde, the woman whose only constant was her ever-present disapproval,  practically _begged_ for the ritual, it was all he could do to stifle the templar in him and sheath the sword.

The mage is grim where the candles has set dark shadows over his eyes. Despite the skeletons roaming the hall, the walls of Redcliffe was the quietest it has ever been.

The first cut is sudden. A single slash on his skin where the blood is the thickest. He watches it spurt out of his wrist and trickle down. Alistair looks away before he could retch. The stench of blood is everywhere, on his skin and in his nose, in the magic that swirls in the air around them.

He chances a glance at her, wondering what he’ll see. Regret? Madness? He wonders what she’s thinking.

_What was he thinking?!_

He sees that stupid, stubborn pride of hers in the way her jaw is set, and in the sharpness of her gaze. It is why they only watch as Lady Isolde’s spine cracks in the open air, her body hanging slack above them. The sound is deafening, horrifying in its finality.

Alistair feels a part of himself dying with her.

 

 

**X.**

 

He’s _angry_.

He pulls her away at camp one night and he is still angry.

Maybe because he realises she is stumbling at all this as much as he is.

(And maybe because the anger is more for himself, than for her).

The truth is, she could say that the Maker Himself possessed her to allow Isolde to die, and he still would be angry.

Not at her, but at _something._

At Loghain. At the Blight. At his own ability to do nothing in the situation but blame.

He seethes in his corner until the Swamp Witch threatens to set his underclothes on fire if he doesn't hurry it up with their dinner.

‘Oh stuff it Morrigan.'


End file.
